SAT has been designed to help safety professionals and others assess slip hazards on smooth floors prone to contamination from substances such as water, food, oil and dust. Already being used successfully by HSE and local authority enforcement officers, it is now being made available to the wider occupational health and safety community.
The SAT can be downloaded from HSE's Web site at http://146.101.202.138. Users will need to purchase a surface roughness meter.
The software consists of a computer-based package that is used in conjunction with a hand-held surface roughness meter to generate a "slip-risk" rating. This rating can then be used to determine the risk of workers slipping in the area. A summary of the results can then be saved to a file for further analysis or a hardcopy can created to provide a record of the findings.
Unlike conventional slip test methods, SAT prompts the user to consider a wide range of contributory factors, including floor surface properties, cleaning regimes and recontamination rates. This will enable the user to determine the main causes of the slipping risk and to identify the most effective remediation to control it.
